Netflix plans to give away DVDs as service shuts down

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In the land before streaming, there was a time when getting a Netflix DVD in the mail felt magical. Those times have largely passed, and soon the service behind it will end, as we covered in April. But on Monday, Netflix announced that customers can keep any remaining DVDs they have after September 29 once the service shuts down. Additionally, subscribers can potentially get up to 10 discs for free as the service clears out its inventory.

These days, Netflix handles its DVD rental service through a subsidiary called DVD.com. The DVD amnesty announcement came via DVD.com's X account on Monday, relayed to us by The Verge.

An "X" social network screenshot of the free Netflix DVD announcement from Monday, August 21, 2023. (credit: Ars Technica)

In 1997, Netflix launched as a pay-per-rental service, but it transitioned to the now-famous subscription queue system in 1999, where customers make a list of DVDs they'd like to receive, and they would get shipped out in order as they became available. As we noted in April, this business model partially led to the collapse of video rental chains. While once popular, the world largely moved on to streaming video services, and in April of this year, Netflix announced that it would discontinue its DVD rental service permanently.